How to Rewire Your Mind to Handle Anything, Turn Off Stress, & Calm Your Body

Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I'm just going to take a wild guess and assume you feel exactly like I do right now. You're overwhelmed. You're thinking about all the things that you need to get done. You're worried about someone in your family. You feel this constant pressure at work. Every day, the things that pop up that you have to deal with are endless. Plus, you're carrying what feels like the weight of the world with you because the headlines are horrible and you have no idea what to do about the problems you see in the world. I feel the exact same way. So I reached out to one of the world's leading medical experts on stress and resilience to give us both advice on what to do at a moment like this. And she's going to tell both of us. What's going on right now? You can handle it. Things will get better. You're not going to go through this alone. And you were built to be resilient. So whatever it is that you're going through, I want you to know you're in the right place. You're listening to the exact thing you need to hear, and you're going to get the support you deserve. You're about to learn research-backed tools that will help you dial down your stress. And our expert will tell you how to do it. step-by-step through exactly what you need to do when life feels like this. She'll even prove to you that yes, it's even possible to find moments of joy, meaning, and purpose while you do. Because the fact is, you can handle this. And after listening today, you will. I am so excited that you're here. It's such an honor to spend time with you and to be together. And if you're a new listener, I want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I cannot wait for you to meet today's guest, Dr. Tara Narula, because she's here to teach you how to handle the stress and pressure of life right now, and become more resilient. Dr. Narula is a board-certified cardiologist and director of the Women's Heart Program at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She's been practicing medicine for over two decades. She's a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra. Dr. Narula is also an Emmy Award-winning medical journalist who is the chief medical correspondent for ABC News. Dr. Narula earned her bachelor's degree at Stanford, her medical degree with the highest honors from the University of Southern California, completed her residency at Harvard University and Brigham and Women's Hospital, and her cardiology fellowship at Weill Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Narula is also a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the New York Times bestselling author of the book The Healing Power of Resilience. Please help me welcome Dr. Tara Narula to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, thank you for writing this extraordinary bestselling book, The Healing Power of Resilience. I cannot wait to dive into the research, the tools, but I want to start by having you explain to me, how could my life be different and feel different if I really take to heart everything that you are about to teach us today and I apply it? Yeah. You know, Mel, we have one precious life, and in the time that we're here on earth, everybody wants to be able to take the most out of every moment, every experience, every day. I know that's what I want. That's what my family wants. That's what my patients tell me they want, is that quality of life. The problem is that, as you know, during life, things happen. Things go wrong. Things go bad. We face challenges. And so for many people, that challenge, that traumatic event, whatever that may be, a divorce, a financial loss, a frozen and stuck, and we're not able to really take all of the things out of life that we want. And so, you know, resilience is really about finding your way to that space where despite what happens to you in life, you can still call and glean and take everything amazing from your experience in life and not let life take over you. And, you know, I obviously have so many examples of resilience that I've seen in my life as a doctor, as a journalist, as a friend, I think about often, um, a friend of mine actually from college, we met Stanford, our intern year, she's from Massachusetts and she was single. She wanted to have a child for many years and she finally went through IVF. She got pregnant and about three months into her pregnancy, she called me and told me she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Oh my God. So if you can imagine, you know, waiting and pushing and struggling so hard to have a baby, finding out during your pregnancy, you have ovarian cancer. And it was one of those moments where, I mean, she had a choice, right? Where do you go at this unimaginable moment? And she was resilience personified. She finished her pregnancy. She delivered her beautiful baby. She lived those last two years that she was alive with her daughter full. And she wrote about her journey. She was present for her daughter. She made plans for what would happen for after she passed. It was this incredible, beautiful story, my friend Kaz, as we called her of resilience, despite the literally incredible happening. And so that's what I want for people. No matter what I get hit with or slammed with, I can still enjoy my life. I can thrive. That is the word that I think about. Just in that story of your dear friend Kaz, I think every one of us can think of somebody in our lives or somebody that we've seen as they've had tragedy hit their lives. They somehow seem to be able to rise to the moment. And I think that's what I want for people. I want to meet that moment in an extraordinarily inspiring and kind of, in some ways, jaw-dropping way. And yet you wonder personally, I don't think I could do that. Like if that were me, I would be breadcrumbs on the floor. And yet we are all one phone call, one diagnosis, one accident, one tragedy away from having life run you over. And I love in that story how you the medical piece, the hope and aspiration of getting pregnant and going through IVF, the devastating news, and the fact that despite, and I thank you for saying the word despite, despite all that, there is still this well of strength, this fight that can be brought out inside you when this happens. And when I started to dive into the research psychologically, what fascinated me was exactly what you said, that I think a lot of people think if I get hit with something, I'm going to fall apart. And when I interviewed psychologists and they said to me, no, that that is actually the small fraction of people that develop PTSD in the setting of trauma. The majority of people are going to be okay when something happens. And I thought, why don't we tell people that? That's actually really empowering to know that no matter what happens, I'm going to be okay. And then the second thing they taught me, which is that resilience is a skill. It is something that is not just fixed. You either have it or you don't. It is something that you can absolutely strengthen and build just like a muscle. And again, it was like, here's something that's really powerful information that people don't know. And so it was really important for me to kind of tell people both of those things. You have this real amazing gift inside you, but also you can practice it, you can grow it, you can build it. And that's a really important, empowering thing for people to understand. Well, Dr. Narula, maybe where we should start is what is resilience? Like how do you define it? Yeah. And that's another thing that I think is really important. I think it's really important and I think when you listen to or read the psychology research, they all have different definitions. And so for me, it was important to kind of cultivate my own definition. And what became clear to me was what we just talked about, which is resilience is the ability, in my opinion, to retain your wonder, joy, excitement, investment, engagement in life, despite what happens to you. So you are not ever going to go back to where you were. You're going to move in a different direction. And this again, comes out of my experience. And I think it's really important because it's a clinical experience. When I am telling someone who has no idea they have heart disease, that they have coronary artery disease or plaque in their arteries, and they thought they were completely healthy. Or I'm telling someone your heart function is 20%, not 50%. You have heart failure. The look that I see on their face, Mel, is the same every time. It is kind of a look of just fear and paralysis. And they ask me, when am I going to be myself again? That's what they want to know. What do you say? And I say, you will never, ever be yourself again. I don't want that answer. You will never be yourself again. But, and here's the big thing, you can be a beautiful, different version of you. Your life can be an incredible different version or chapter. And, you know, I think a lot about the quote of Michelangelo, which I used in the book about how he said he carved the marble to set the angel free. He saw the angel in the marble and he carved until he set the angel free. This idea that, you know, we are this piece of marble and life is sort of changing us. And I think that's a really good idea. and we're evolving, but there's still something beautiful that can come out of it. And I just thought that's such a beautiful thing. such a beautiful visual image. If we could just think of our lives that way, that change is inevitable, adversity is inevitable, bad things are going to happen, but we can still emerge as this beautiful creation. Well, if you hold onto that vision that there is an angel inside you to be set free, it is very empowering. Right. And what I also love about the way that you're explaining this is that you're not saying that you deserve to have this happen. You're not saying that you needed to have this happen. I hate it when people are like, everything happens for a reason. I'm like, well, sometimes things happen because it's just really horrendous what's happening. You didn't deserve it. You have to find a reason to keep going despite what happened. I want to read to you from your bestselling book. This is in the introduction, and you talk about resilience. You say, resilience is not the capacity to return to the same place you began after trauma or tragedy. Neither our minds nor our bodies are built like rubber bands. We do not bounce back. We are influenced and affected. We recover, we grow, we change. This, I believe, is what the core of resilience is, the ability to embrace change. We are constantly being shaped by our experiences, change affecting the composition as a whole, even as we remain ourselves. We are the marble and we are the angel. Exactly. We're both. It's so beautiful. Because oftentimes, I think when you hear the word resilience, and it's kind of thrown around loosely a lot, I always just thought it was the ability to bounce back. Or to not feel, to just put my head down in the sand and keep going forward without processing what's happened, you know? Yeah. Just keep moving. And you're saying, no, inside you is the ability to adapt to the change and not lose yourself, but to how to and to learn how to still find joy and wonder and connection despite all of what's going on. It's a different version of you, right? It's beautiful. And that, you know, what I also love about our conversation today is that you have very specific skills that you're going to walk us through, a bunch of them, that will help you adapt and change when this happens. Can you give me some examples of smaller moments, like maybe that happened to kids in school or that happen at school, that are also quietly building resilience in you? Yeah. I mean, Mel, it's everywhere, right? And so the common denominator, and again, the reason it was important for me to talk about this is stress. So our lives are full of stressful events. Now you're a cardiologist. Yes, I am. Could you medically explain to me what stress is? Because I think, you know, we talk about stress and it's like, I feel stressed. I feel stressed because of the headlines. I feel stressed because of what's happening to my kid at school. I feel stressed because, you know, I'm mad at my spouse right now. Yeah. But what is stress? Stress in and of itself is not a bad thing. We all need some stress in our lives. Why? Stress can be positive because it can push us. It can push us to evolve and change. Okay. The point is that there's a tipping point where the stress then becomes negative. One of my favorite professors from Stanford, Robert Sapolsky, wrote a book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. And he studies primates and studies the stress response and, you know, talks very openly about this idea that our stress is meant to be a place or a function for us to survive. So that if we're escaping a lion in the wild, we turn it on. Our heart rate goes up. Our blood pressure goes up. Our respiratory rate goes up. We turn off all the non-essential functions, our digestion, our reproduction, our growth, so we can live. The issue is that when you're in the wild and you're escaping an animal and then you escape, your stress response goes off. In our current day society, we turn on the stress response for all those things you just talked about. We get a bill in the mail that's difficult to handle. We hear something at school. Our friend says something to us. We feel bullied. We go to work and our boss is tough on us. Every little insult during our day causes a stress reaction. And you can imagine how damaging this can be to our bodies on the inside. So the point is, even though we have this stress response, guess what? We are not victim to it. We can mount a resilient response. We can actually turn it off, dial it down, and counteract it. That's the purpose of the resilient response. But I think it's important to understand how negative and destructive stress can be. And I hear it from my patients all day long that they're stressed. Dr. Narula, how can a person tell the difference, just like normal everyday stress, modern life, and stress and pressure that is becoming a problem? Yeah. Well, the stress is there all the time, every day. And so it's really, again, our reaction to it. So if you are able to take on the stress and then within a few minutes, you feel the same way that you did, it's probably not an issue. But that's not how it works for most of us. And so for most of us, it is that that stress response stays on. We sort of feel our muscles clenched. We're not breathing as much. Our heart rate is a little bit faster. Our mind continues to cycle and think about it. So it's when that's happening over and over again throughout the course of the day that it becomes an issue. And I will say this, Mel. I mean, there is such a thing as a stress-induced heart attack from an acute stress. Women tend to be more prone to this than men. So even acute stress can cause problems. But yes, we think more about that chronic, low-grade, constant stress that's happening day after day, a couple hours during the day, on and off, on and off. So I always tell people, you need to find time to turn your stress response off. And whether that is a walk, music, meditation, exercise, breathing exercises, meeting a friend, those moments where you're dialing it down from 10 to zero, that is going to help your to move through the stress. Dr. Narula, I would love to have you speak to the person listening and to me, who not only just feels the pressure of their own life and the stress of getting through the day and dealing with things going on in their family, but the ongoing pressure and stress of all the events going on in the world, all of the global unrest, just this tremendous pressure that comes from a sense of hopelessness. And a lack of power and an inability to feel like you can do anything to change. Like, why does paying attention to your resilience, why is it critical in a moment like now? Because you can't change the world around you, right? You cannot stop what's happening around you from happening. You can't change those stressors. I tell people, you know, maybe you can't leave your job that's stressful. You just can't. You can't, you know, get out of the situation that you're in, right? We don't have control over that. What do we have control over? We have control over how we respond to the stress, right? It's not the stress that kills us. It is our reaction to it. So what do you think is a really great, just first, small way to think about the stress that so many people feel about the state of the world? Like, what is one recommendation when it comes to something that you see going on, whether it's in your community or the world at large that's really bothering you? Well, I think one is you don't have to take it all in, right? So for a lot of my patients, I'll say, don't, I mean, I'm on the news. Don't turn the news on, you know? I mean, if that means it's going to give you that peace, like you're entitled to not watch morning television if you don't want to, right? I think also finding ways that you can make those small changes. So maybe it means like going out and marching for something you believe in. You know, cause change in the opposite direction, even those small little steps. So there's so much I think we can do. We just need to give people like the ability to do it. Well, let's go back to your friend Kaz. Like what a terrifying and horrendous set of circumstances. And still she said, this is horrible. And I have a choice about how I respond to it. Well, one of the things that you write about just right in the introduction, and we're going to unpack all of the skills, but one of the things you write about is getting to a point where you accept your current situation. And on that note of acceptance, right? Because it is one of the stages of grief to just be in denial of it. This can't be happening. How could I possibly have ovarian cancer? I just got pregnant. We live in the United States. How is this happening here? I worked so hard. How am I losing my job? What do you mean that there are layoffs? Acceptance doesn't mean you're giving up, right? What does it mean? Yeah. And this, I, you know, in laying out the book and figuring out what skills, what blueprint did I want to give people? Acceptance had to be the first one. It had to be the first tool because you can't do anything else until you've accepted what happened. And one of the women that I interviewed for my CBS news story, who I also feature in the book is Lucy Hone, who is an incredible resilience researcher of her own right. She studies resilience. She writes about it. She talks about it. Her 12 year old daughter died in a car accident. And suddenly the resilience researcher had to, who used the skills that she had learned to move forward. And she's given one of the most watched TED talks in the country. And the first thing she says is adversity doesn't discriminate. And I think that is such an important thing. We're all going to get hit at some point in time, something bad's going to happen, but we can't change that. We have to accept it. And so to your question, when I was in medical school, I had my own experience where I had to learn acceptance. I was in my second year of medical school. I was in the lecture hall, started to see colored lights part of my right eye when they would dim the lecture hall lights, didn't know what was going on, went home to Miami over Christmas break, and suddenly discovered through a battery of tests that I had a visual field loss in the bottom part of my right eye. I was a healthy 23-year-old and suddenly was blind in the bottom part of my eye. Nobody knew why. They told me I might've had a stroke. I might have multiple sclerosis. So I went back to medical school thinking I might have multiple sclerosis. I might not be able to walk, see, finish medical school. It was, Mel, the absolute worst, most scary moment in my life. Because again, I had fought really hard to get to medical school. I was excited to be there. And now I thought the whole trajectory of my life is going to go in a different direction. And my mother sent me on a card in the mail, the serenity prayer. And the first line is, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And I read her words and she called me. She said, you can spend every day, the next two years of your medical school worrying about what might happen and wasting that time. Or you can imagine it might never happen, your worst thoughts, and just put one foot in front of the other and go day after day. And that advice really saved me. And that is advice I give many of my patients when things happen to them, is put one foot in front of the other. This happened, now we're going to move forward day by day by day. And the farther you get away from the event, the further. The pain and the fear becomes. Just a few weeks ago, I had a patient who went in for a routine surgery, sort of been in and out. Something went wrong in the operating room and he came out 70% blind. And I saw him six months ago in the aftermath of that. And he was sort of broken. I mean, he was as anybody would be. And then I saw him a couple of weeks ago and there was a lightness to him and he was smiling. And I said to him, how did you get to this point? It's been six months and you seem so different from where you were. And he said to me two things. He said, one was acceptance. I couldn't change what happened and I had to learn to accept it. And then he said, social support, his friends, those two things. But acceptance is the beginning of your journey. It is the opening of the door to everything else. So for somebody who's listening right now and you have felt so much pressure, you've been under stress. You can't even remember a time when you weren't stressed. Maybe you're caring for aging parents. Maybe you've got the new class of stress, which is parenting young kids. That's me. Yeah. Maybe there's just, you don't even remember a time. Is what you're about to teach us for that person? And can you talk to the person who doesn't even remember life when they didn't feel pressure? It is for everyone. What I'm going to tell you is for everyone. The resilience, this is something we can all use. And it is so critically important because we have stress at every angle, at every point in our life. Caregiver stress is real. And again, it's something I see, especially in a lot of my female patients. In the last month, I had three female patients who are married to male patients of mine, talk to me about the stress that they are having because they're caregiving for their husbands, their kids, and everyone else in their life. I had one whose husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's. And she's trying to manage his failing health and dementia that's developing. Another one whose husband had a stroke is not, no longer who he was. And the third one was a woman who said her husband had his own mental health issues the last six months. And so all three of these women were talking to me about the massive stress that they were facing being caregivers. And we talked about how to manage that stress and how to handle that stress and the fact that they needed support and help in order to continue to be caregivers. Their spouses, but also to protect their own health. Why do you think it's so hard when you're in the caregiving role to really understand the critical nature of taking care of yourself? Because you're so overpowered and overwhelmed by the care and love and empathy and responsibility that you feel for another human being. And so that's an amazing thing, right? To have so much love for someone that you're giving up everything, but you can't, you know, we have to take care of ourselves. In order to be able to be there for someone else, you have to. Why? Because it is critical to your survival. And it's going to be critical to the survival of the person that you're caring for. Because if you decompensate, if your health declines, it's game over, right? And so again, I think people just think of stress as this invisible force that we don't really understand. But Mel, I mean, I will tell you from a cardiovascular perspective, a whole cascade of things, particularly in your cardiovascular system, which are all negative. And cardiovascular disease is already the leading cause of death for men and women. And I'm telling you, I'm seeing it every day in my exam rooms. I'm hearing it. This is so important and we are not talking about it. We're not educating about it. We're not helping our patients manage it. We are totally living in, you know, a world where we have a divide between psychology and clinical medicine. We got to do a better job. We cannot have a siloed world of psychology and clinical medicine and no bridging this gap. You know, I'm just so grateful that you're here. I'm already feeling better and a little bit more resilient, frankly, because I feel like I have some tools this early into our conversation. I know that you're feeling the same way. I think everyone would feel better if they listen to this. We all deserve to know how to be more resilient and we're just getting started with the tools. When we return, we're going to continue walking step by step through exactly how to move through a moment like this in your life. Stay with me. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today, you and I are getting to learn all about resilience, the ability to adapt to change that is hardwired within you and the people that you care about from Dr. Tara Narula. And I just want to jump right back in. So I'm glad you're here. Dr. Narula. On the topic of resilience, I was curious about this. Can you talk more about the role that resilience plays in your overall health? What's fascinating about resilience is it's not just a tool for healing, which, you know, the book is called The Healing Power of Resilience, but it is a tool for prevention. So the more that you practice this tools of resilience and utilize this blueprint and this roadmap, the more likely you are to not go down the road of developing chronic disease because you are going to be less stressed and have less in inflammation and have your, you know, lower levels of cortisol, less vascular reactivity of your blood vessels. You are going to do those things we talked about that are going to keep you healthy, like exercising and eating well and sleeping well. So it really is both prevention in terms of chronic disease and also a way that you can move out of a diagnosis or a disease process. Well, that's why you're here, Dr. Narula. And I want to just bring back that beautiful image that you talked about, both as we've been speaking and that you write a lot about in your book, that if you are under this chronic pressure, you are both the block of marble and the angel within it. And you talked about the first step being acceptance, accepting that you are in this chapter of your life, you are in the role of a caregiver, or you are under the gun of severe financial pressure in order to pay off debt or whatever it may be. There's tons of ways that people find themselves in a state of chronic stress. Maybe you're dealing with a long-term diagnosis yourself for chronic pain, but acceptance that this is the way things are, and I can't change that fact right now is step one. In your book, you also talk about a flexible mindset being the next step. That flexibility of saying, you know, I thought my life was going down this course, but now it's going down a different course or direction, and I'm okay with that. But I'm not okay with that. Like that's the problem with the flexible mindset. Like part of it is I don't want this. I know. And that's where, you know, acceptance commitment therapy and CBT therapy and other forms of mindfulness and meditation can help. But truly, you know, again, referencing back to Lucy Hone, who I talked about earlier, you know, she gave a great analogy of, you know, imagining you have these goalposts in front of you, you're kicking the ball in a certain direction through the goal. And she said she realized when her 12-year-old daughter died and she still had her husband and sons, like she had to live for them. She had to keep going. So she picked up the goalpost and moved on. And she said, you know, I don't want this. I don't want this. I did somewhere else. So this, and I thought that was such a great, easy to understand image. You can still have a goal. You can still aim for it. It's just in a different place, right? And I see this a lot in medicine. You know, there are patients where I can't give them back the heart cells that have died. I can't give them back the movement of their arm when they've had a stroke. We can't go back, but we can still help them find a different path towards meaning in their life. If they have that flexible thinking, I thought I might be able to do this. Okay. I can't do that, but I'm going to shift and I'm going to do this. And so really that flexible thinking is sort of the second key to remodeling, reshaping the vision for what you thought your life was going to be into something else. And that's okay. But the point is, you know, whatever life hits you with, if you can pick up that goalpost and put it somewhere else and know you can still move forward towards it, that image can be life-saving. Dr. Narula, I personally, feel that the image of the goalpost is probably going to cause the single biggest change in people's lives that listen to this. And as you're listening, I want you to think about just in your own life, are you still trying to aim for a goalpost that's no longer there? Because you can see how if you're looking at a goalpost that's no longer there, you're not going to find joy. You're not going to find meaning. You're not going to find all the things that you deserve in your life if you keep moving in that direction. So from a medical perspective, how does choosing to change the goalpost, accepting that you have a different life now, how does that help you get through a challenge? It's like the lighthouse that draws you forward. It pulls you forward. And that kind of goal, we all need that. We all need something to continue to strive for that gives us meaning in life, right? Mm-hmm. We all have our different meanings for why we're here. But I think when you lose that meaning, you lose that sense of like, I don't know why I'm here. It's like kills you on the inside. And so, and you feel stressed. But when you say, okay, I thought I was here for this reason, but now I'm here for this reason, it's like a light that turns on inside. And so it's just a reframing and reshaping of what you, again, the marble and the angel, it's a reframing and reshaping of who you thought you were, what your life would be, and recognition that like, no, life is change. It is constantly changing. If something in your life has changed, somebody's died, you didn't get into the dream school, you lost your job, the divorce has happened, like, here's the diagnosis, your kid's really struggling, and you are so stubborn or scared or whatever that you continue to look at the old life that you wanted, you're creating more stress for yourself. That's right. Because you're resisting what's actually happened. You're resisting the change. You're fighting against it. So, you know, we use the analogy in the book of be the river, not the rock, right? You have to flow with life to get the most out of life, right? That malleability, that flexibility is really critical. One of the exercises that one of the psychologists I interviewed told me about, which again, I loved because it was very visual, was the identity pie. He said he has his patients draw a circle and cut into the circle pieces of a pie. I'm a mother, I'm a writer, you know, I'm a dog owner, I'm an athlete, you know, I'm a baker. And a small slice of the pie is their medical diagnosis. And when you look at that and you see, that's right, I am not my diagnosis. I am so much bigger than that. I am so much more than that. And again, it lets you see my life is so much more full. It has so much more meaning. It has so much more direction for where I can go. I'm not stuck in that vision of being a victim of my disease process. That's really helpful because you're right. Kind of like the goalposts that when something happens, we kind of laser focus on that thing and you forget there's all these other aspects to who you are and what your life contains. That's right. And what your life can be. You have to see that, right? Now, what happens? You talked about the kind of be the river. Don't be the rock in the river resisting everything. Just kind of be the rock in the river resisting everything. You got to learn to go with the way that life is taking you. What effect does that have on your stress and on the kind of physical impact in your body when you really start to accept and you have a flexible mindset and you use some of these tools like the identity pie to say, well, I'm more than this diagnosis. I'm more than this moment. I'm the kind of person that can get through something like this. Yeah. Well, two things. I mean, when we turn off the stress response, it means that we are using our parasympathetic, for example, nervous system. So the one where we lower our blood pressure. So does accepting and does kind of doing these tools like help you turn on the parasympathetic response? Correct. Helps you turn on the parasympathetic. It's not just intellectual? But also you're not then activating the stress response. So there is a clear pathway when we activate a stress response. Our amygdala, this very basic structure in the brain that senses threat and fear is kind of the signal that sends a signal to the hypothalamus in our brain, these deep structures that then send signal to the pituitary and the adrenal glands and that whole cascade where you're essentially then releasing cortisol, the stress hormone from your adrenal glands, epinephrine, adrenaline, norepinephrine. That's all turned on when you're under stress. But if you counteract that, and that's where things like therapy and meditation and mindfulness can come in or your thought process, you're not allowing that pathway to turn on. You're turning it off, number one. Number two, when you're not living in a state of stress, you're actually making lifestyle choices, which we haven't talked about, that help you live a healthier life. So you are exercising, you are eating healthier, you are getting more sleep, you're not missing your medical appointments, you're not maybe using substances. So it all kind of goes together. What's happening on the inside, you know, you're dialing everything down, but also you're making choices that are also helping you be healthier and lower your stress response. If you exercise, you're decreasing your stress, right? If you're eating more, you're turning down a lot of these hormones. So it all goes hand in hand. You know, I talk to my patients about sitting down with a therapist and many times they say, well, I don't have anxiety or, you know, I'm not depressed. I'm just caregiving and I'm under stress. And I say, that's enough. That's enough of a reason to sit down with someone. You can just download on somebody objective who can be there for you. So you can just let go of your thoughts because that in and of itself will lower your stress. You are allowed to spend an hour, you know, a week or, you know, once every two weeks talking to someone who's in your corner to help you. So therapy can be just to help you through a stressful time. Maybe you don't do it forever, but do it while you're in this period of stress to help you get through the caregiving journey. And then people are really surprised when I say they're like, really? I managed to see a therapist for that. Yes. Yes, you absolutely should. Let's talk about just like ways to calm yourself when you get that wave, you know, like comes in waves, whether you're like, oh my God, the text that comes in or, you know, layoffs are coming. I need to see you in the office tomorrow morning or a million ways you could feel stressed out. Is there, is there something that you love, Dr. Arula, that you do when you feel the quick wave? I love exercise. So for me, you know, finding a way to get my heart rate up and exercise and move my body is my stress relief. So I find time to carve that out. Being outside, I feel like in nature is a very underrated feeling. I feel better. We have a home in Connecticut, which is like very rural, just taking a walk, seeing the birds, you know, seeing the trees, getting the fresh air. I feel like nature is extremely powerful. And then, you know, breathing exercises. And I think some of the techniques that I've learned about, you know, kind of taking five breaths in and then letting them out, you know, a lot of these things we can do, the breath work can actually help sort of, again, in the moment really turn down the stress response. I am learning so much today. I feel better just listening to you tell all these stories and walk us through exactly what we can do. All right, don't go anywhere. After a short word from our amazing sponsors, Dr. Narula will be back. We're going to be talking more about hope and about purpose and more tools to get yourself through moments like this in life. So stay with me. Welcome back. I'm so thrilled that you're still here with me and Dr. Narula. We're talking about resilience and walking through a step-by-step simple plan for how you can tap into your ability to navigate change and still find purpose, joy, and meaning regardless of what life is throwing at you. So Dr. Narula, let's go right back into the tools. I'd love to talk about negative, negative, and negative. I'm going to talk about negative, negative, and negative. I'm going to talk about negative, negative, and positive self-talk and how the way that you talk to yourself in your own head can compound the stress and make it worse. What did you discover about the way that negative self-talk versus positive self-talk can increase stress or even have a physiological, like, do damage to you? Nobody's perfect. We're flawed human beings, but that's okay. And I think the moment we show ourselves the same, love and the positive talk that we would show our child or our spouse or anyone else that we care about, that is the moment where we start to kind of become more resilient because we see ourselves in the same way that we would see someone that we're caring for as a caregiver. But that positive self-talk is really critical. That's self-love. I always tell people you're, you're, I don't know what's going to happen, but you're not going to go through this alone and you are capable. Yes. Of managing this. That's right. Yes. You're so much stronger than you think. And that, that is really what the book, also was about was this idea that like, we are so much stronger than we think we are. We all have this capacity and we're not going to crumble and fall apart. We can get through it. Again, if we put one foot in front of the other. Let's talk about social support because it is one of the pillars in the book. And I know when I'm stressed out, if I'm going through something traumatic, I tend to become a little bit of a hermit. And what does love and support from other people, do? And like, how do you get it? Social support again, is something that's so underrated, but so easily accessible to all of us. And my friend, my former resident at the Brigham Vivek Murthy. I was his intern. He thankfully, I think, opened our eyes in this country to how negative loneliness can be and how important it is for us to cultivate social relationships for our health. The famous study out of Harvard, Robert Waldinger's study that followed men for years, what was it that sort of translated into the best quality of life? It was the quality of their social connections. It wasn't anything else. We have just this growing body of data and literature showing the power of social connection. I think for a lot of people, they think, oh, well, I need to have a big group of friends. For a lot of my patients, we talk about it doesn't have to be a large group of friends. It can be one friend that you pick up the phone and call. It can be joining an art class because you love art. There's so many outlets that we can explore to find that. I recently told the story of, again, another patient of mine who retired. He started smoking marijuana and felt very depressed, wondering, where am I going with my life? One of his friends said, Central Park is right there. They have a group, the Central Park group that goes and picks up the garbage and trims the trees. We meet twice a week. He joined the group. He said just that one step of joining that group, and now he does it twice a week for about an hour, saved him because it gave him a group of people who he could meet every week. He was outside. And he started to feel so much better about his life. So it's these micro, small changes that we can make, and all of us can do it every single day. It is easy to sit on the couch and feel sorry for yourself. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the state of the world. It is easy, and it's an appropriate response to be shocked by life when it's not how you want it to be. That's right. But at some point, you got to do something. And just this social support, going to bingo night, joining a. It seems so dumb, but when you're in the throes of the stress and the overwhelm, you don't feel empowered to do it, but it works. And that's an example of you putting a deposit in the bank of resilience. It is an investment. And I tell people, resilience training and the skills we're talking about, it's work. It's work. Just like exercising. I hate getting up at five in the morning and exercising, during the week. I knew I liked you. I don't like looking at the nutrition labels to figure out how much saturated fat it is. Do I want this one or this one? But every single thing we do in life, everything, whether it is for our career, our family, our health, it's an investment and it's hard. And no one is going to say that becoming more resilient is easy, but the investment, the payoff that will come by building this toolbox of skills is so important because the time something happens, you will reach back in and say, I can do this. I think it's also important to say, if you're going through a very difficult time, it is human nature to not want to reach out and you shouldn't have to. But if nobody knows what's actually going on, they don't know to show up to support you and they might be drowning in their own issues. And I know a lot of the times, if you're really struggling, the last. The last thing you want to do because you've been thinking about it all day, you've been talking about it all day, particularly if you're dealing with a diagnosis, you don't want to call a friend and then have to talk through it all again today. And that's really understandable, but also recognizing that if you simply were to text them and to say, I have a lot going on, it's exhausting to share the details, but I could really use a morning out on Saturday with a friend right now. That's right. That's right. Just those small little tiny changes. And speaking to, what you said about a diagnosis, that's a whole nother topic, but for patients who've been diagnosed with something, joining a group of other survivors can be really a powerful way to build connection. I volunteer for the American Heart Association and Go Red for Women and seeing a community of other female cardiac patients and connecting with them and learning that you're not alone and sharing your struggles, those kinds of community advocacy groups for whatever your concern or health issue is, can be really helpful. You know, you have an entire chapter, chapter nine on the critical importance of finding hope. And I'm reading to you from page 191. Sometimes a health event can be so scary that a patient can't believe another day will come. Sometimes a diagnosis can be so dire that a patient can't imagine what the next day will look like. When we learn we don't have much future left, or if what lies ahead looks completely unlikely, we can't imagine what the next day will look like. The life we have known so far, what happens next? That's when we need hope the most. Hope is the foundation that allows us to build a resilient response in the moment, whatever happens next. What is hope? And why does having hope, especially in moments, whether it's the world at large that feels lost and things feel hopeless, or something going on in your family makes you feel like all is lost? Why is hope important? And what does it actually mean, Dr. Norella? I had a patient in my office, again, I told you, a wife and a husband. The husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's. And he looked at me, Mel, and he said, how do I not lose hope? Yes. He said to me, how do I not lose hope? And you can imagine as a doctor, that's a very, very hard question to answer. And I'm a cardiologist, and this was about a neurologic problem. And I said, how do I not lose hope? And he said, how do I not lose hope? It's a degenerative condition. It's not my field. But I could see that he was struggling. And his wife was in the room with him. And he said, I still have so much I want to write. I love my wife so much. I have so much I want to do with her. I'm getting emotional thinking about it. And I'm falling apart from my disease. And so I just sat there with him and I said, you have to find hope in the small moments of every single day. So every day that you wake up and you see your wife and you can say, I love you and hear her say, I love you, that's hope, right? Every day that you can sit at your computer and still write your book that you're writing, that's hope. It is the fact that there could be a treatment tomorrow that you don't know about that comes down the pipeline for your condition. It is literally finding those small moments of joy and looking for something that you may not know that exists and believing in that. Something that is further down the future. That's hope. And I want you to lean into that. I said to him, I want you to kind of fall towards the side of hope and not towards the side of, you know, despair. You know, one other thing that I think helps a lot, or at least this helps me in regard to the state of the world, is if I read something that makes me feel despair, I then look for someone doing good. I think you're totally right. And, you know, as someone who works in the news, I've had several conversations with the networks that I've been at about how we need to tell more stories of hope. Yes. We need to put that out there because people need to see it. Is there a daily habit that you can practice to help you cultivate this hopefulness as a skill set and a mindset? Because I refuse to succumb to the despair. And that's not being naive. It's I just choose to believe there's always something you can do. So my husband gave me the book, The Secret and the Magic. Yeah. Because he knows I believe in manifesting and dreams and all that sort of stuff. Proven by neuroscience. I mean, it's not even believing in it. It's proven. Yeah. So one of the exercises says, you know, in the morning when you wake up or before you go to bed at night, you think about six things that you're grateful for. And at first, when I started doing it, I thought, oh my God, six, that sounds like a lot. Six things. But then you start to think about it and they're small things there. You know, my daughter told me about something that really great happened in her day today. You know, my patient, I helped them, you know, with this, I was able to get up and exercise on the treadmill today and walk because I'm able to use my legs. Yeah. The subway came on time today and I didn't have to wait 10 minutes. And suddenly as you were doing, you start to realize there's actually a lot of things that really went well that I'm grateful for. And your mindset shifts. Well, the way you described it, Dr. Narula, you're intentionally directing and programming your mind to notice what's going well, which if you notice things that are going well, you naturally start to feel more hopeful. Is that how that works? That's what I'm saying. Yes, exactly. You start to feel more hopeful. I think, you know, putting out, we talked about manifesting, but putting out into the universe the energy that you want to bring back to you. That gives me hope because you feel control. You feel like I'm putting out this and that's going to help me get what I want. So as a medical doctor and a cardiologist, talk to me a little bit more about using the tools of manifesting, which is really getting intentional about what you want to see. We've moved the goalpost. How could you use this to help you move toward a goalpost that has shifted in your life and to change your own attitude? My kids and everyone, you know, talk to me about, you're a cardiologist, but you talk so much about psychology. Yes. And that's because they really are, you know, intertwined. Do you think it has a health benefit to manifest? I do. I mean, I think, again, anything that gives us a sense of agency over our life, I think helps us feel better and less stressed. And so when you feel like you have the power to get that, you know, you're able to do that. And I think that's things that you want by simply believing in them, that makes us feel better. Well, if you really think about it, stress is the same thing as manifesting. It's just doing it in the negative. That's right. Because you're allowing all of the things that are happening outside of you to become the things you're expecting to have happen. And that you're focusing on like an endless loop and thinking about. But is there anything specific that you personally do, Dr. Narula, as a manifesting practice, like to really train your mind? I'm serious. I love this stuff. I have written down things that I want and put them on a piece of paper and put them up in my home or in my office. And then I look at it and I say, this is where I want to be and this is what I want. And there it is. That's it. I'm putting it out in the universe. So when you write something down that you really want and you're signaling to your mind, Dr. Narula, is there a specific time of year you do it? No, it's whenever there's something that I want to achieve in my life. Okay. And is there. Is there a certain way that you write it down? I just write it on a piece of paper and take a little thumbtack and put it up on the wall. And I have my kids doing it now too. We sit at the dinner table and I'll say, let's manifest that this is going to happen. We talk about it out loud in my family because I want them to start to do it at this age. They're 13 and nine to believe that they have control and power over their future and what they want. And yes, I agree with you. I think when you're living in a state of constant stress, you can't refocus your mind. The brain is plastic. We keep saying that it is plastic. It can change. We can rewire it. And part of the way we do that is by the thoughts we choose to focus on. Dr. Narula, can manifesting help even during times of stress? Manifesting can help at all times, Mel. Why? Because again, you're taking your mind and you're taking it from one thought process and you're literally picking it up and putting it in another thought process. Oh my God. It's like moving the mental goalpost. It's moving your mental goalpost from a negative thought process to a positive. I want this thought process. Again, it just, you know, the hope is that people start to recognize we have so much more power over our bodies, over our lives by what we do up here, by how we think, by what we believe, by how we talk to ourselves. We have that ability. We just don't teach people to harness it. We don't teach people to use that. I agree with you. Even the identity pie, which forces you to see that your life is bigger than the current circumstances or the caregiving role or the job that you have, that there are so many different parts of you and taking a moment to remind yourself of that lowers your stress. It reminds you of who you are. It gives you an access point to start to shift your life in a different direction. And I believe that the intentional act of manifesting and allowing yourself to say, even if you're writing down, I am capable of getting through this. I want to carve out six hours a week, which seems unthinkable just for me. I am going to be singing in the choir this fall again. There are ways that you can grab on to what you're talking about because stress and pressure and the world around us is bombarding us and it's changing the way we think about what's possible. And so I think you need to fight back and this is an important tool. Yes. Yeah. And it's so simple. We can all do it. And it's free. It's free. My daughter's turning 10 and last night she took my laptop and she came and showed me and I said, what are you doing? And she said, a vision board, my 10 year old daughter for where she wants her 10 year life to go and what she wants to happen. And I thought, okay, I'm doing something right. You're doing a lot more than that, but you're doing a lot, right? That's fantastic. It was very cute. Why shouldn't she? That's what I said. Otherwise society's telling her that's right. And her friends are telling her she can have a vision for her life. Great job, mom. Great job. I want to read you again from your bestselling book. This page two 11 chapter 10, pursue your purpose. It happens to all of us. We find ourselves at a moment when the life we know and are accustomed to is suddenly in alterably changed. It often arises unexpectedly. It may be that we don't get into the college of our dreams or land the job we had been working toward for all of our career or our partner of 30 years announces that she wants a divorce or we're diagnosed with heart disease. And we're told that if we don't alter our lifestyle quickly, as soon as possible, we run a high risk of soon having a heart attack or stroke. These moments create a sense of great vulnerability. Our sense of who we are, our identity is called into question. What all of these wake up calls offer us is a chance for introspection to take a closer look at our priorities and our path and to see if they are aligned toward what we might call our purpose. How does having a sense of purpose help you live a happier and more fulfilling life, especially when the world or when life just feels really awful? Yeah. I mean, this, as I said, was purposefully the last chapter in the book, because as I mentioned, I call it your purpose is your lighthouse. When things are dark, when you can't see how you could possibly be happy or have meaning in your life, your purpose calls you there. And we all have it. We all have something that really drives us in this life. And for everyone, it's a little bit different. And I think what can happen is when something happens to us that challenges us, that stresses us, it forces us to either reevaluate the purpose that we never pursued. So for a lot of people, they have the purpose, but they were too afraid to go after it. They didn't think they should, they didn't think they deserved it. And a stressful traumatic event will open your eyes to saying, my life is short and I'm going to make the most of it. I'm going to go after that purpose. Open your eyes to a purpose that you never thought would be your purpose. So we talked about advocacy. So for a lot of people, it shows them that they want to become the voice for other people who have survived what they have survived. And that becomes their purpose for living for kind of changing the way other people see whatever the disease process is or whatever the issue is that they're fighting for. And so the purpose is just such an incredibly amazing force. And I think I would just encourage everyone to, to seek that out inside of them. So Dr. Narula, for the person who's listening, is like, I have no idea what my purpose is right now. Do you have any really small examples of how some of your patients might've found a sense of purpose while they're going through a really difficult time that you might overlook? Because, because I could see a sense of purpose might be my purpose this year is to take better care of myself while I'm caring for my parents, a sense of purpose might be, I want to be part of the wave of positive change that needs to happen in the world. A sense of purpose might be, I don't know, going back to school because you haven't really learned anything new in a very long time. I mean, can you give us just a sense? Because I think that how do I, that's a big topic. Yeah. Yeah. No. And I think I've see it in all of those aspects in my patients. I do have patients who've had something happen to them and they were in one career and they have said, you know, I am going to go back to school and study, something else that I didn't pursue before, but now I'm going to do it. Or other people who have been maybe miserable in their jobs, close to retirement, didn't want to retire, but say, you know what? It's time. I'm going to stop. I'm going to travel. I'm going to spend time with my husband and my dogs, you know, and I'm going to enjoy my life. So I think purpose can be as simple as that. It can be as simple as, you know, finding what you want to do at that point in your life and going after it. Well, it's kind of a reason to get out of bed. And, you know, if we go back to the purpose became to live the biggest, fullest, boldest life she could with the time that she had. Exactly. Exactly. For the person who's listening right now and is just kind of wanting to know what to do, what's one small thing you could do today to start to build the skill? Is it to start with acceptance? I think acceptance would be key of whatever your condition or state is, but I think the social connection is a big one. And that is the easiest one I think to start. I mean, some of them are inward and some of them are external, right? Some of them are, yes, flexible thinking and acceptance, but some of them are, you know, getting fit and getting up and exercising or eating healthier or sleeping more. That's something that people can easily start to do is changing those little things in their lifestyle or reaching out and developing your social connections. And it's maybe just saying, I didn't talk to this person in the last six months, but I've been wanting to, I'm going to pick up the phone today and give them a call and have a conversation, you know? Well, I think it's really helpful to hear that because think about it, you've already mentioned this word, like an investment, that you're making a deposit in the bank of resilience. And if your world's not falling apart at some point, you're going to be just like the rest of us. And it will at some point. And reaching out to somebody or finding an interest and getting into a group or getting yourself out of your house and going for a walk with somebody is a small investment that you can make in terms of the resilience that we all need to tap into when the fight comes. That's right. And, you know, again, not to bring love back into this, but I think, you know, we all usually have someone in our lives, whether it is a sibling who is still living or a parent or your spouse. And that love, that deep, intimate connection is something that we can, again, easily focus on and cultivate. I think of the story that we put in the book of my colleague at ABC, Will Reeves' father, Christopher Reeve, and his wife, Dana. And if you haven't seen the, you know, documentary about their life, I suggest it. It's beautifully done, but there's a moment in time where, you know, she says to him, you're still you and I love you. And he said, had she not said those words, I don't think I would be here. And it just speaks to the power of one person in your life, one sentence, one love that can kind of draw you out of something so devastatingly difficult and deep. And so that's worth the investment. Those relationships in your life are worth the investment. Well, Dr. Narula, I cannot thank you enough. The visual examples, the framework that you gave us, the redefining of what resilience isn't, bouncing back, what it is adapting to change and being able to adapt and still find all the meaning and purpose and joy in the life that you now have and the strength that we have inside each and every one of us to do it. But you have laid out a roadmap for us to be able to tap into this innate strength. And I am so grateful that you spent the time to write the book and that you're here today sharing it with us. That's worth everything. So if one person comes away feeling that they are better off because they realize their resilience and how they can build it to tackle life, then I've done my work. So thank you. Well, you did your work because there's no doubt that as you've listened today, you have come. Feeling stronger and more resilient and able to face whatever it is that life is going to bring your way. One of my favorite things that Dr. Narula said, I'm going to come back to this over and over. You are the marble and you are also the angel. And if you put the tools to work, there is no doubt in my mind that whatever it is that you're facing or seeing in the world, you will be able to adapt and change and be part of the positive wave that comes with it. Alrighty. In case nobody else tells you, as you're following this podcast, I'd love to hear from you. I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And the fact that you spent time listening to this particular episode proves to me that you will create a better life because you got the tools that you needed in order to adapt to any change that's coming. Alrighty. I'll see you in the very next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play. Okay. You ready? Here we go. And the best selling author and the New York Times bestselling author of the book. You can't even remember a time. Oh, great. Keep the whistle wet. That's a good idea. Let me spray with some bee honey stuff here. Dr. Nalura. Dr. Nalura. Oh my Lord. Dr. Nalura. Thank you. Do you need anything? No, I'm good. You are fantastic. Oh, you're so sweet. Oh my God. The stories are fantastic. Your passion is fantastic. Your clarity is fantastic. Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.